Media Consumption Shifts in Wake of 9/11

More TV; less newspapers. That’s one of the major shifts reported in post-9/11 media consumption in a new study by McPheters & Company/Beta Research.

Americans are spending more time watching television now than they were in October. The median amount of time spent per day watching television has increased from 4.1 hours a day in October to 5.2 hours a day in May.

While the amount of time spent watching TV news has remained constant at 2.4 hours/day, time spent viewing other non-news programming has increased from 2.2 hours to 2.8 hours.

Since October, the average number of days/week a newspaper is read has declined from 5.6 to 4.5 days. However, the average number of newspapers read by those who read newspapers has increased from 1.5 to 1.7 newspapers/week, and the proportion of newspaper readers who read 2 or more newspapers/week has increased from 33% to 49%.

The proportion of adults who have read a magazine the last week increased from 72% in October to 78% in May. There has been no change in the number of days/week (2.3) or in the number of magazines (2.2) that are read.

Among the three-quarters of the population that has access to the Internet at home or at work, the proportion of those who have accessed the Internet in the last 7 days declined from 86%in October to 81% in April. Among this group, the average number of days that the accessed the Internet in the last week also declined – from 5.6 to 5.0.